


Traditions Old and New

by speccygeekgrrl



Series: lovers from the moon [11]
Category: Mystery Science Theater 3000
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, First Christmas, Kinga hates Santa Claus, Kinga loves twitter, Multi, how do three people establish Christmas traditions as a family?, lots of talk about when the fourth member of their family arrives, pretty haphazardly tbh, this is kind of goofy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 09:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13164402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speccygeekgrrl/pseuds/speccygeekgrrl
Summary: Kinga and Max have their own traditions surrounding the holiday season, but they don't want to just impose them on Jonah without his input. Jonah, as usual, is pretty easygoing about being folded into his spouses' weirdness. It's still hard to establish a new tradition living in a hotel knowing that next year the family will be larger by one, though.





	Traditions Old and New

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SylaBub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylaBub/gifts).



> I promised SylaBub fic for surviving her semester. This is... not precisely the fic I promised, but it's as close as I am going to get before the end of the year. I hope it'll do.

"What should we do for our first Christmas together as a family?" Jonah posed the question a week after the wedding, leaving them a day and a half to figure out the answer.

"Enjoy the only Christmas we'll get for a couple decades without a kid to worry about?" Kinga offered, curled up against Jonah's side where they sat on the couch. "I mean, Max and I have traditions of our own..."

"Building new traditions is part of the fun of settling down," Max said cheerfully from Jonah's other side. "We shouldn't just shanghai him into what we're used to doing."

"Point," Kinga said. "Although I feel like the movie tradition would fly pretty well with him."

"Movie tradition?" Jonah perked up. "Another movie tradition? You seem to have a lot of them."

"I mean, obviously we would, given how we were raised… On Christmas Eve we watch our favorite Christmas movies and drink spiked eggnog, although not for her this year," Max said. "I don't think pregnant women are supposed to drink eggnog at all? I feel like I read that somewhere."

"Fake news," Kinga said. "And Dr. Shaw said I can have a drink. I'm not going to be getting crunk or anything but I can have one, right?"

"How about we revise it to hot cocoa this year, just to be safe?" Jonah suggested. "Because I don't really like eggnog anyways."

"I'm okay with that," Max said immediately. "I think we just drank eggnog because it's what we did when we were kids, I'm not even that big a fan of it."

"Sacrilege," Kinga said, pointing an accusatory finger at him. "Profaning the sacred name of eggnog."

"It's not even the best seasonal drink," Max sighed. "Peppermint hot cocoa is by far more delicious than eggnog."

"Oh, shit," Jonah said at the look on Kinga's face when she heard that. "You might want to backpedal..."

"I will do no such thing."

"I'll concede on the beverage if you'll promise not to make me watch It's A Wonderful Life again," she said. "Because I really don't feel the need to imagine a universe without me. It'd be in a really shitty place by now if we hadn't stepped in."

"Deal," Max said, tugging her hand up to kiss the back of it sweetly. "That means I have to resort to my second favorite Christmas movie."

"And that would be...?" Jonah asked.

"The Santa Clause," Max said.

"You fucking sap," Kinga said, and Max rolled his eyes.

"Maybe I just enjoy it on its own merits and not because of our history with it," Max said.

"Maybe I'll lay an egg and our daughter will be a platypus," Kinga shot back. Jonah blinked and raised a hand tentatively, getting them both to look at him.

"I like that one too," he said. "But my favorite Christmas movie is Die Hard."

"That's not a Christmas movie," Max said.

"Sure it is. Santa can't come until Hans Gruber falls off Nakatomi Plaza. I don't make the rules."

"You could now, actually," Kinga said. "Although you may wish to start with something more consequential."

"What's more consequential than the true meaning of Christmas?"

"The true meaning of Christmas is throwing a terrorist off a high-rise building?" Max asked, barely biting back a laugh.

"It doesn't have to be a terrorist," Jonah said. "We could throw a Nazi off the top of our building."

"Can we throw Richard Spencer off our building?" Kinga asked. "I feel like that would be in the spirit of the season."

"I feel like we probably shouldn't throw anyone off a building, even as tempting as that sounds," Max said. "Also, _Jonah_ , don't encourage her!"

"Technically, I was encouraging him," Kinga said. "He's the one who generated the idea."

"Don't encourage each other! How did I get stuck being the voice of reason in this marriage?"

"You have the most life experience," Jonah said. "You have to keep us youthful rash ones in line."

"Did you just call me old?" Max tried to scowl but he was too amused to make a good show of it.

"I would never call you old," Jonah said quickly. "Old _er_ than us, yes, but hardly old."

"Forty is the new thirty," Kinga said. "And thirty is the new twenty."

"If twenty-seven is the new seventeen then I think there's something slightly unsavory about this relationship," Jonah said. Max sighed, dropping his head into his hands.

"You had to make it weird."

"In my defense, what about us isn't weird? We're all individually weird, and weird multiplies."

"We are multiplying," Kinga chimed in, curving a hand over her belly. "Our kid's going to be super weird."

"Not as weird as she'd have been if we stayed on the moon," Max pointed out. Kinga shuddered.

"Giving birth on the moon sounds like a great way to die in childbirth," she said. "No. I'm glad to be able to go to a real hospital when it's time."

"We were never going to let that happen," Jonah said. "You happened to take care of the issue before Max and I had to do anything about it, but there was zero chance we were going to let you have that baby on the moon without a real doctor or anything."

"And how were you going to prevent that exactly?"

"I was going to have Brain Guy on call," Max said. "Barring that, there was the Backjack. You needed to see a doctor, but literally the day after you told us about it, you'd come up with your own plan to get back to Earth."

"Well, you both helped with the plan," Kinga pointed out. "I'd say it was a mutually decided plan."

"That's true," Jonah said. "Hey, you never said what your favorite Christmas movie is..."

"Didn't I?"

"No."

"It's Kiss Kiss Bang Bang."

"And you try to tell me Die Hard can't be a Christmas movie," Jonah said, giving Max the side-eye. Max shrugged.

"I'm just glad she's not making me watch Nightmare Before Christmas any more, that was her favorite for years."

"Don't even say it," Kinga said threateningly when Jonah opened his mouth. His eyes widened and he closed his mouth. "Sounds like we have a lineup, then."

"You're not the type to wake up early on Christmas morning for presents, are you?" Jonah asked.

"I wake up early anyways usually," Max said. "And Kinga won't wake up early unless she has no choice about it."

"I'll wake up early if I'm woken up," Kinga said. "But I won't be happy about it."

"Oh, I already know that," Jonah said. "I'm fine with taking it lazy. I just didn't know what time we should start watching them at." 

“I think if we start around dinnertime we should be fine,” Max said. 

“Do you have any Christmas traditions you want to institute?” Kinga asked, looking up at Jonah curiously. He smiled, but shook his head.

“My family traditions are… mostly Hawaii specific,” he said. “And I haven’t maintained any of them since I left home. Least of all while I’ve been in space the past few years. I honestly didn’t even keep track of time that specifically while I was out collecting asteroids. Not much to do to celebrate in the middle of deep space, after all.”

“It doesn’t have to be a tradition you already have,” Max said. “Just one that you want to start having.”

“I feel like it’ll be easier to start traditions when we’re in our own home and not a hotel, even if it is a really, really nice hotel,” Jonah said. “Cause really the only thing I’m highly motivated to do on Christmas this year is cuddle the hell out of you both.”

“Well, we didn’t get a honeymoon yet,” Max pointed out. “I’m okay with just taking the whole week from Christmas to New Year’s for cuddling and canoodling purposes.”

“I was kind of thinking about doing some sort of official Twitter video thing on Christmas morning,” Kinga said. “But I don’t know if cozy pajama empress is the vibe I want to be giving out so soon.”

“It absolutely is,” Jonah said. “The more relatable we make ourselves, the more beloved we’ll be.”

“That’s manipulative of you,” Max said, and Jonah grinned.

“I’m learning from the best,” he pointed out. “But also I’m genuinely excited about people thinking we’re adorable together. We’ve been married one week and there’s already a Twitter account devoted to cute pictures of us. People ship it.”

“Their ship is canon,” Kinga said. “Yeah, I think we should do that. Just like a quick little holiday video. ‘Merry Christmas from our family to yours’ or something like that.”

“I mean, we did save Christmas-slash-the entire holiday season for most of the country,” Max said. “I think it’ll be nice. Something cute and candid.”

“This is a good excuse to break out the matching pajamas,” Jonah said. “Keep that aesthetic going now that we’ve established it. Plus maximum cuteness.”

The weather took a turn for the worse on Christmas Eve, and they were all completely content to spend the rainy, windy day indoors drinking hot cocoa and cuddling on the couch. Max had been knitting like crazy as a stress relief method since the coup, and he kept at it while they were watching movies, setting a purple hat on Kinga’s head twenty minutes into The Santa Clause (which, as he pointed out, was about someone taking a position of power after killing the last person in that position), and finishing a yellow hat for Jonah right before the end of Die Hard. 

“You don’t have a hat,” Kinga pointed out, running her fingers through his hair, and he laughed.

“I have a million hats.”

“You don’t have a matching hat,” Jonah said.

“Of course I do, I keep the test run of a pattern to make sure that it comes out all right.”

“When are you going to start knitting baby things?” Kinga asked.

“As soon as you tell me what color you’re assigning her in your aesthetic, dear.”

“Oh… I haven’t really thought about it yet,” she said, brows arching. “Green is the traditional Forrester color…”

“But purple’s your color,” Jonah said.

“And yellow’s yours,” Max said, “And they’re all gender neutral colors, and I know already that no daughter of Kinga Forrester will be dressed in pink…”

“We’ll just dress all our kids in all our colors and let them decide their own aesthetics as they get older,” Kinga said, and Jonah and Max both looked at her sharply.

“All our kids?” Max asked, sounding more like she had her hand around his throat than around his hand. 

“How many kids?” Jonah asked, and Kinga huffed and rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know. Maybe just the one kid. Pregnancy hasn’t been a cakewalk so far. But… I don’t know, I can’t imagine how my life would have gone without someone to grow up with. I think having two might be nice. Hopefully they’ll get along.”

“Now that we’re royalty don’t we need an heir and a spare?” Jonah asked, pulling her closer. “I think two sounds nice anyways.”

“Partners in crime,” Max said dryly, and Kinga shot him a little smirk. “Let’s not make any decisions this far in advance. You still don’t know what going through labor will be like, or actually having a newborn to care for…”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was just a thought. I don’t want a whole passel of kids or anything. I still can’t really imagine one yet. I have almost zero experience with children in general.”

“Well, there were the Boneheads,” Max said, and she shook her head.

“They weren’t children very long.”

“Just think,” Jonah said, “one year from right now, we’ll be doing our daughter’s first Christmas Eve.”

“One year minus several hours from right now,” Max said. “Hopefully one year from right now we will have the baby in bed already and we’ll be arranging presents under the tree…”

“I don’t want to raise her thinking that Santa is real,” Kinga said, and Jonah blinked at her.

“Isn’t that a bit harsh?”

“My dad tried to sell me on Santa and I knew it was bullshit by age five and I was pissed when I figured it out,” she said. “I don’t think teaching her to buy into globally accepted lies is a trait we want to instill in a future world leader, honestly.”

“Well, after you snapped off the mall Santa’s beard, you ruined Santa for about ten kids that year,” Max pointed out. “And the year after that you put out the Santa trap and my dad woke us up at midnight screaming because he stepped into it.”

“It did catch a jolly white haired man, so it wasn’t a total failure,” she said. 

“...what kind of trap was it?” Jonah asked hesitantly, not sure how bloodthirsty she’d been at the tender age of six. 

“A net,” she said, and pointed at Max. “He did most of the work helping me set it up, anyways.”

“I didn’t think anyone would actually walk into it,” Max said. “But she snuck out of bed to bait the trap and… my father was very food motivated.”

“It didn’t hurt him,” Kinga said dismissively. “It just scared him. He was fine. After he stopped screaming he laughed about it.”

“That’s true,” Max said. “I guess we can skip the whole Santa thing if it means you won’t help our daughter lay a trap for me one year.”

“It’s a true joy and a milestone of mad scientist child development, but I think we can give it a miss.”

“No Santa traditions, then,” Jonah said.

“That doesn’t mean no presents,” she pointed out. “Just no lying about where they come from.”

“You realize she’s probably going to ruin Santa for all her peers,” Jonah said, and Max shrugged.

“Maybe she’ll be as good a liar as her mother.”

“Or as good a prevaricator as her father,” Kinga shot back.

“Unless her father’s the honest one,” Max said, looking at Jonah, and Jonah lifted his hands.

“Full disclosure, I ruined Santa for half of my cousins.”

“In that case… yeah, she’s going to ruin Santa for all her peers,” Max sighed. “Also, if our kid ruins Santa, we’re going to be accused of a War on Christmas.”

“Oh, _please_ ,” Kinga said, rolling her eyes hard. “Santa’s a corporate symbol anyways, it’s not like we’re attacking Christianity. Hell, our three atheistic asses are acting more saintly than who came before us. Feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, caring for the sick…”

“Kinga Forrester, modern-day saint,” Jonah laughed, shaping a halo over her head with both his hands.

“Patron saint of lab accidents and one-in-a-million chances,” Max added, and she playfully sneered at him. 

“Patron saint of second bananas and unconditional love,” she said, and he grinned.

“I’ll take it.” He focused on Jonah and his grin widened. “Patron saint of those who get in over their heads?”

“Over _your_ heads,” Jonah said. “More like patron saint of perennial optimists.”

“Patron saint of miracle workers,” Kinga said, and they both nodded at that. “Although aren’t saints all miracle workers? So you’d be the patron saint of saints.”

“Meta,” Jonah said. “I like it.” She yawned, then Max yawned. Jonah struggled not to do it, but the contagious nature of the yawn caught up with him a few seconds later. “Mm, is it bedtime yet?”

“The faster we go to bed, the faster we can all talk shit about Santa Claus while we fall asleep,” Kinga said, 

“Our wife,” Jonah said melodramatically.

“I know, isn’t she amazing?” Max said, laughing as he stole a kiss from her. “I had something else in mind for my mouth tonight besides talking shit about Santa, though.”

“Go on,” Kinga said, but Max leaned up to whisper something to Jonah and share a conspiratorial look with him. Jonah smirked.

“Is this another tradition?”

“I think we can fit you into it,” Max said, and Kinga looked suddenly, intensely smug.

“Oh, I think so,” she purred, and she stood up and put her hands on her hips as she regarded her husbands. “I think he’ll fit into it beautifully.” _Beautiful_ was all that either of them could think. They’d been on the couch all day long, and she was still wearing the purple knitted hat over her purple plush pajamas, hair sticking out in all directions where she’d pulled the hat over her messy bun, no makeup to veil the exhaustion she’d been running herself into trying to arrange all the things that would kick into law on the first of January, or to take credit for other people arranging them. The fact that her baby bump was seriously starting to show now didn’t make her any less gorgeous to either of them. Max was a little worried by how cute he thought she was pregnant, honestly. None of his idle daydreams about starting a family with her had taken into account how radiant she was when she wasn’t in the middle of a hormone-induced breakdown. “Well? Are you just going to stare at me or are you nerds coming to bed?” They both popped off the couch and followed her beckoning finger into the bedroom.

It turned out that there was plenty of room in the existing Christmas Eve tradition for Jonah, who always tended to be the giving type in bed anyways. In the morning, they discovered that Kinga had liberated Max’s pajama top from the floor before they’d settled down to sleep, the green setting off her hair beautifully. “Dare you to wear that in the Twitter video,” Jonah said, and Max shook his head.

“We might be legally married but that’s no reason to advertise that we have a sex life.”

“Pretty sure the baby will advertise that obviously enough in a couple months,” Kinga said, shrugging out of the shirt and tossing it at Max before finding her own where it had been abandoned closer to the door of the bedroom. “Our blatantly conceived out of wedlock baby that at least won’t be a bastard now…”

“You watch too much Game of Thrones,” Max said.

“If it were, the baby’s insignia would be a purple skull and bones on a white field,” Jonah said thoughtfully. “Since bastards get the insignia colors reversed.”

“I don’t think it would matter since she’s inheriting maternally anyways,” Max said, buttoning his pajama top. “Which of us is the dad isn’t that important. She was always going to be a Forrester either way. I’m just glad that I finally get to be one too.”

“You should see the way you look when you’ve introduced yourself since the wedding,” Jonah said. “You just absolutely light up every time you call yourself a Forrester.”

“I love it,” Kinga said. “I had no idea it would make him this happy or I would have married him sooner.”

“If you married him sooner, this all would have gone very, very differently,” Jonah pointed out.

“I’m glad it went the way it did,” Max said promptly. “I’m happy that I get to have both of you for good.” When they walked out of the bedroom, Max paused, Kinga ran into him, and Jonah caught her when she staggered. “What the hell?”

“What?” Kinga asked. “What is it?”

“Santa came,” Jonah said, easily seeing over his spouses to the table bearing three piles of presents. Kinga twitched and turned to look at him with a dangerous expression.

“Did you do this?”

“Kinga, you were half on top of me for the entire night, how would I have managed this?” She turned her glare on Max, who lifted both hands disarmingly.

“I was the first one in the bed and the last one out of it,” he said. “I didn’t do it.”

“What if it’s a trap?” Kinga said, starting to circle the table suspiciously. “What if they’re booby trapped?”

“Well, I can see a lot of things I wrapped myself in those piles, but I didn’t put them there,” Max said. 

“Yeah, same,” Jonah said. “I was going to pull them out this morning, but I guess I didn’t hide them very well.”

“Where did you hide them?” Kinga asked. 

“I stashed them in Synthia and Terry’s suite,” Max said, and Jonah looked sheepish.

“Yeah, I asked her to hold onto them for me too.”

“Well, I didn’t, and I can see my gifts for you in those piles too,” Kinga said. “But I did tell her where I was hiding them.”

“Synthia Claus,” Max said. “Less offensive to you than Santa Claus, I hope. This was sweet of her to arrange.”

“Should we do the Twitter thing before we open them? They make a nice backdrop,” Jonah pointed out. 

“I don’t want to perpetuate the Santa myth,” Kinga said, and Max rolled his eyes.

“Sweetheart, you’re incredibly beloved right now, don’t throw that away on killing Santa Claus, please.”

“That’s an interesting idea,” she said thoughtfully, and he sighed and went to grab the selfie stick he’d made fun of her for weeks for buying before grudgingly admitting that it was, in fact, not useless or frivolous but came in pretty handy a surprising amount of the time. He joined them on the couch and got the phone set up while she looked up at Jonah. “How do I look?”

“Tousled and adorable,” he said.

“Are you sure it looks like bedhead and not sex hair?”

“I mean, it’s both.”

“Do I need to fix it?”

“You both look tousled,” Max said. “And adorable. You’re fine, trust me.”

“Should we get room service cocoa or something? Some kind of prop?” she asked.

“It’ll be a thirty second video,” Jonah said. “I think we’ll be okay without it.” Max got the phone set so they were all in the frame, Jonah in the middle with Kinga on his left and Max on his right, with the presents visible behind them, and he took a couple of gratuitous pictures of them smiling and leaning together.

“Okay… ready?”

“Ready.” Max hit record, and the three of them beamed into the camera.

“Merry Christmas from our family to yours,” Kinga said.

“Or happy Monday off, if that’s all it is,” Max added.

“We’re hoping that everyone has a safe and happy holiday season,” Jonah said.

“Or at least safer and happier than you thought it would be,” Kinga said. 

“Next year will be even better,” Max said. “We have a lot planned for 2018 that we think people will like.”

“Stay tuned,” Jonah said brightly. “Things are going to get pretty cool.”

“Was that a global warming joke?” Kinga asked.

“I mean, we’re not quite that ambitious in 2018, but maybe by 2020,” Jonah said.

“Yeah, don’t jump the gun,” Max said.

“Happy New Year from the Forresters, everyone,” Kinga said. “We’re going to make it a happy one.” She nudged Max with her elbow and he hit stop, then detached the phone from the selfie stick and hit replay so they could all see it. “Oh my god how could you let me record that with my hair like this,” she said instantly, elbowing them both hard. “You’re awful.”

“What are you talking about, you’re so adorable,” Jonah said. “We look incredibly domestic, this is perfect.”

“It is pretty perfect,” Max said. “I think we should post it.”

“Here, give it to me,” Kinga sighed, taking the phone from his hands and tapping around a bit before handing it back to him. “There. Done deed.”

“Can we do presents now?” Jonah asked. “Because I really, really want to see your reactions to what I made for you.”

“Made for us,” Max repeated, beaming. “Not got, made.”

“Well, yeah. Why would I get you something premade when I could make you something even more useful?”

“I made some stuff and bought some stuff,” Max said.

“Well, I bought everything, because I was too busy running a country to get crafty,” Kinga said. “Hope that’s not a disappointment.”

“You’re never a disappointment,” Max told her, and dropped a kiss to her hair as he got up to start handing their gifts to them on the couch. “You are, yourself, a gift.”

“I agree,” Jonah said, leaning in to kiss her cheek, and she huffed a laugh and caught him by the chin to steal a proper kiss from him.

“Yeah, well, you must be gifts because I certainly don’t deserve you.”

By the time Kinga dug her phone out from under the pile of discarded wrapping paper that had accumulated on the table, their video had been retweeted a couple thousand times, and the @ForresterWatch Twitter had posted a multi-tweet thread about how goddamn cute the three of them were, how dare they, who did they think they were in their matching pajamas and dopey lovesick smiles, who gave them the right to be the literal most adorable world leaders? The literal most adorable world leaders got quite a laugh out of it while they were waiting for their breakfast room service.


End file.
